Communications is now a feature. Are you leveraging it?

Originally published on my personal Blogger site tobyallens.blogspot.com on 7 January 2017, during my time at Acme Packet. Reposted here verbatim from the original.

Communications is now a feature. An expected feature for mobile applications. Forward looking enterprises are embedding communications within their applications. They are also extending their applications out into communications channels such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and the like. The focus here though is on the benefits that you gain when adding communications channels directly into your mobile applications and websites. The biggest benefit is that integrating communications channels into your applications allows you to extract context.

This context allows you to remove friction from customer interactions and deliver superior Customer Experience (CX).

How does context remove friction? Customers have typically already provided credentials to the application. They have logged in. This means no entering account numbers or phone passwords. Thus you can eliminate these steps from contact centre. This is already very powerful, identifying oneself to contact centres is a pain for both customers and employers. Yet, this is just the start of the benefits that can be gained by integrating communications directly into applications.

The application can also send through information about what the user has been trying to do. Are they looking at a travel booking? Are they trying to download content? Are they looking at home loans? If you add this context to their identity and push it all into the routing engine then not only can you bypass the identification steps in the IVR you can bypass the IVR completely. The customer can be delivered directly to an agent. And not just any agent, they can be delivered directly to an agent with the correct skill set to handle the expected query. Rather than having to screen the calls with a set of unskilled agents calls cab be routed directly to skilled agents.

Think also about call handling times in this scenario. Agents already know what the customer is trying to do or at least they have a very good idea. This means that the CC systems can present all the relevant information to the agent allowing them to do their job much quicker. This leads to decreased call handling times and increased agent productivity. Thus not only do you greatly improve the experience for the customer, but also for the employees. This means that overall both the employees and the customers are less stressed and happier. Happier employees are more productive and happier customers drive increased net promoter scores. A win for everyone involved.

Still not convinced? Let’s try some examples:

• I am a frequent business traveller. Frequent travel means frequent interaction with my corporate travel agency. It also means that I have multiple applications on my phone dedicated to travel. Although I do my best to avoid it occasionally I do have to ring up to change a flight. This means listening to 2 minutes of announcements about how I should be booking on line before I even have the pleasure of joining an extended queue to wait for an agent. Then I have to give them my reservation code, six letters that invariably have to be repeated multiple times even if I do go to the trouble of using the NATO phonetic alphabet. But there could be a better way (aside from the obvious of letting me change flights online…) I could fire up the application on my phone and browse to the booking that needs to be changed. I could even click the exact flight I want to change. Then using embedded chat or voice calling the application could send all of this information through to the agent. They know exactly who I am and they know exactly what I would like to do. Change a particular flight. I could get directed straight to an agent, who greets me by name and jumps straight into organising a new flight.
• I use mobile banking frequently at least once a week. Recently I had some issues logging into a linked account. I couldn’t figure out how to get it connected to the mobile application. Eventually I resorted to hitting the call button in the mobile application. This dropped me back to the standard phone dialler and dumped me into the phone banking queue. I then couldn’t log in because I had no idea what my phone banking password was. I can’t even remember the last time I called the bank. Eventually I found my way to an agent, who couldn’t do what I wanted and had to transfer me to another agent. They couldn’t help either and transferred me to a third agent who could finally give me the information I needed. Now, imagine this situation again but with context transferred to the contact centre. There would be no need to reset my password because they would already know who I was, I wouldn’t even need to enter an account number. They could also see that I had been trying to view a particular account and even that I needed additional permissions to do this. Immediately they could confirm the issue and resolve it. Turning a 20 minute ordeal into a 2 minute breeze.

These two simple examples demonstrate the power of embedding communications channels into applications. The ability to bypass user identification and simplify user verification. The ability to skip the IVR. The ability to route directly to a skilled agent. These can save significant costs for businesses and also deliver superior service to the end customer. A win for both sides.